Can a team full of betas still dominate — this seems to be the question you’re posing. And in this light Paige was an interesting sort of alpha in being the chief bucket-getter as well as the dominant personality. Geno’s coached teams where those two functions weren’t combined. The first two Stewie-led teams were like that. On the other hand, Diana’s teams were exactly like Paige’s teams, with an alpha bucket-getter. Maya's teams too.
As for playing stars out of position and being vulnerable to opposing bigs, that certainly describes the last two seasons. Paige as power forward, Aaliyah as center constantly struggled with this, but at the same time Geno was working on the small ball lineups that could eventually solve the problem. In the last NC run, he finally had the right personnel (and enough of them) to make the formula work. Geno lost the magic alpha, added a workhorse big, and a wild card in Blanca. This and the potential recovery of a cadre of big fast wings makes us both one of the biggest teams in the country and one of the quickest. This is a combination we haven’t seen before. Uncharted territory.
